RFID play made easy

Somebody tell ThinkGeek to get their sweet gadgety asses over to the UK and set up a store here; honestly, I could spend all of my milk money on playthings from their catalogue, if international shipping didn’t put me off. Latest to tempt my VISA card is this DIY RFID kit, intended to take short-range radio identification tagging out of the hands of Big Brother and put it into those of Big Geek.

$99.99 gets you more than a dozen different RFID chips, each pre-programmed with a unique HEX code and just desperate to be scanned by the USB reader. Software to actually turn that information into something useful is available to download, so now it’s all too easy to set up a “no ice cream after 6pm” freezer.

Among the chips is a bio-implantable one which ThinkGeek are keen to point out should not be actually rammed under your skin because it hasn’t been surgically sterilised. We all know that such a warning won’t stop at least a few people from trying it, however, so keep watching out for reports on BoingBoing about geeks using their gangrenous arms to unlock their front door.

The kit is currently out of stock, but should be available sometime toward the end of March.